Monday, April 3, 2017

Science X Newsletter Week 13

(Phys.org)—A trio of researchers with Oregon State University and Monmouth University has conducted experiments with cats, and has found that they appear to like humans more than expected. In their paper published in the journal Behavioral Processes, Kristyn Vitale Shreve, Lindsay Mehrkam and Monique Udell describe their experiments and their plans for conducting additional experiments to better understand cat motivations.

Many cancer patients struggle with the adverse effects of chemotherapy, still the most prescribed cancer treatment. For patients with pancreatic cancer and other aggressive cancers, the forecast is more grim: there is no known effective therapy.

Stanford scientists have identified a small group of neurons that communicates goings-on in the brain's respiratory control center to the structure responsible for generating arousal throughout the brain.

Enigmatic 'dark energy', thought to make up 68% of the universe, may not exist at all, according to a Hungarian-American team. The researchers believe that standard models of the universe fail to take account of its changing structure, but that once this is done the need for dark energy disappears. The team publish their results in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

While studying scavenger behavior in Utah's Great Basin Desert, University of Utah biologists observed an American badger do something that no other scientists had documented before: bury an entire calf carcass by itself.

Researchers at Aalto University have manufactured artificial materials with engineered electronic properties. By moving individual atoms under their microscope, the scientists were able to create atomic lattices with a predetermined electrical response. The possibility to precisely arrange the atoms on a sample bring 'designer quantum materials' one step closer to reality. By arranging atoms in a lattice, it becomes possible to engineer the electronic properties of the material through the atomic structure.

A newly approved drug that is the first to reflect the current scientific understanding of multiple sclerosis (MS) – is holding new hope for the hundreds of thousands Americans living with the disease.

How fast will a quantum computer be able to calculate? While fully functional versions of these long-sought technological marvels have yet to be built, one theorist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has shown that, if they can be realized, there may be fewer limits to their speed than previously put forth.

The 2016 election year highlighted the growing problem of wealth inequality and finding ways to help the people who are falling behind. This human urge of compassion isn't new, but the big question that remains to be addressed is why inequality is so difficult to erase.

(Phys.org)—A pair of archaeologists with the American Museum of Natural History has unearthed a palatial compound in El Palenque's plaza in the Oaxaca Valley in Mexico. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Elsa Redmond and Charles Spencer describe their work, what they have uncovered and how their findings fit with the emergence of organized states in Mesoamerica.

Classical physics states that a crystal consists of perfectly ordered particles from a continuous symmetrical atomic structure. The Mermin-Wagner theorem from 1966 broke with this view: it states that in one-dimensional and two-dimensional atomic structures (for example in an atomic chain or membrane) there cannot be perfect ordering of particles over long ranges.

The discovery of a 'storm' layer created when superfluid helium flows across a rough surface has turned a century of understanding about one of the most important discoveries in quantum physics on its head.

(Phys.org)—In a new study, physicists have shown a way to establish real entanglement between two identical particles—a topic that has been disputed until now. The results provide a better understanding of the fundamental nature of entanglement between identical particles and have potential applications in quantum information processing.

Observations using ESO's Very Large Telescope have revealed stars forming within powerful outflows of material blasted out from supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies. These are the first confirmed observations of stars forming in this kind of extreme environment. The discovery has many consequences for understanding galaxy properties and evolution. The results are published in the journal Nature.

If you participate in a study in my lab, the Huettel Lab at Duke, you may be asked to play an economic game.

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